Discovering there's no cola on board his sea house (!) and unwilling to accept any substitutes, Khan takes off on an improvised speed boat motorcycle hybrid that we are going to wager is nowhere near being street legal.Winter is the cruellest season for cola advertising. Even the most ardent soft drink fan sates himself on other beverages and so companies typically don't bother rolling out fresh campaigns this time of the year. Which is one of the things that makes the release of a new ad for Thums Up featuring Salman Khan so unusual.

We assume that the film, the script or both spent some time in cold storage, pending the High Court verdict on the 2002 hit and run case allegedly involving the Bollywood star. With Khan being exonerated the film is out, riding the larger societal trend of a pro-Salman Khan wave, seasonality be damned.

Also damned are subtlety and nuance, always in short supply in Thums Up advertising. Discovering there's no cola on board his sea house (!) and unwilling to accept any substitutes, Khan takes off on an improvised speed boat motorcycle hybrid that we are going to wager is nowhere near being street legal. He narrowly misses a few fishermen while the VO rambles on about how those who are toofani (stormy, tempestuous, violent destructive forces of nature - you take your pick) don't understand the meaning of kuch aur (something else). Irrespective of the obstacles on the road something else is never an option it continues. Be it choosing Thums Up, or anything else, it concludes.

How you like the ad depends entirely on whether or not you are in the Bhai-zone (different from the other, apparently less desirable bhai zone that sad sacks complain about come Raksha Bandhan). If Bajrangi Bhaijaan had you weeping, this ad will presumably have you thumping your chest, twirling your Being Human T-shirt in the air, whooping or pelvic thrusting; we are unsure on protocol adhered to by Khan's fans who want to express joy. You'll see nothing wrong in this ode to defying laws of gravity, good sense and property (numerous commenters on YouTube wonder why the star goes through such an elaborate ruse over a `10 drink of cola; some even offer to buy him a bottle).

If you haven't been Bhai-zoned, and are instead the sort who dutifully shared the account of the last days of Khan's erstwhile state appointed bodyguard Ravindra Patil on social media, who wondered at the No One Killed Jessica style verdict or agonised over the fate of the pavement dwellers who lost their lives that night and the black bucks who went up to the great sanctuary in the sky nearly two decades ago, the script will strike you as problematic at best and insensitive and gloating at worst.

Brand gurus have often recommended that brands be polarising; that trying to be everything to everyone is the surest way of being nothing to no one. And so, especially in a country like ours where we give our celebrities a fairly liberal leeway of acceptable behaviour, maybe the sort of scandals that send American or European marketers speed dialling both their PR agencies and their lawyers will merely become grist for the script mill. Those who are offended will have to decide whether they like the product in spite of its endorser; whether buying something as innocuous as a soft drink is akin to buying into a value system that they stand against. Because as our box office has demonstrated time and again, large parts of India love nothing more than a bad boy who wins against the odds and never settles for kuch aur.